Sonnet for Shakespeare’s Birthday/Earth Day

Posted by Andrew Howley of NG Staff on April 23, 2012
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Photo by Andrew Howley
Shakespeare looks out over the throngs in London's Leicester Square from his monument with an admonishment from "Twelfth Night" Act IV, scene ii, lines 41-42.

What better way to celebrate the bard (and the planet) than a bit of well-intentioned doggerel?

 

Four hundred years it takes for Earth to blink

‘Cause she be large and moveth glacially slow.

‘Tis hardly time enough for her to think

“Whence did my poet-playwright boyfriend go?”

 

For he’d proclaim her praises left and right,

Compareth things with her each time he spoke.

A summer day, the wind, the snow so white:

Cramm’d into every scene and bawdy joke.

 

Attention like that she could use again

So lifeless seem our tables, stats, and charts.

A pox and curse be put upon man’s brain!

Let’s put to use our too-long silent hearts.

 

So happy day, dear Shakespeare, of your birth

And happy day, dear planet, naméd Earth.

 

More Shakespeare From National Geographic

Map of Shakespeare’s Britain

Common Words Coined by Shakespeare

 

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Comments

  1. Ima Ryma
    April 24, 2012, 5:41 am

    On April 23rd, ’tis said
    William Shakespeare was born and died.
    Prose and poetry from his head
    Was penned and performed far and wide.
    His words outlive his flesh and bone
    As only human ways can do,
    To be beyond life and death known,
    Beyond the man that neighbors knew.
    The world of Shakespeare as the man
    Was relatively short and small.
    His words reached out in global span
    To touch in time and space for all.

    Could Shakespeare have predicted that
    He’d round the Earth that was not flat?

  2. Meetika Srivastava
    April 23, 2012, 11:35 am

    A wrote an ode to Shakespeare sometime back happy b’day to the “bard of avon”
    http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ode-to-shakespeare-2/